


A Heist Makes a Home

by queermoraghid (TheDoctorIsIcecube)



Series: Torna: The Golden Flufftry [6]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Family Fluff, Heist, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15872367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorIsIcecube/pseuds/queermoraghid
Summary: Mikhail has an idea of their next base of operations - a salvaged Tornan battleship.





	1. Heist

“I have an idea about where we can go next.” Mikhail’s voice took Jin by surprise. He and Malos had been discussing their next move, but Mik rarely contributed to those kinds of conversations. “There’s a big salvage coming in tomorrow morning. They’re pulling out the really big guns for it.”

“What, you want to go see them haul up a ship?” Malos snorted. “It’s not that interesting, kid.” 

“No I don’t, even though it is really interesting.” Mikhail folded his arms, and there was an expression on his face that Jin recognised as meaning nothing but trouble. “I want to steal their ship.” 

“No,” Malos said. “We’re not stealing their valuable salvage. Ships need titans to run these days. We’d steal it and immediately get arrested.”

“It’s a Tornan ship,” Mik said. “Sank years and years ago, sure, but it doesn’t need a titan.”

“If that’s true, we could theoretically have a shot at stealing it,” Jin mused. “It would be dangerous, but still…” 

“Oh, now you’re on his side? Great…” Malos already looked like he was considering the idea, and Jin knew that Mikhail knew he had won. The older that kid got, the smarter he seemed to get. It was frequently infuriating, but on this occasion Jin found it more amusing than anything. 

“Think about how cool it would be!” Mikhail said, his hands flailing everywhere. Architect, that kid couldn’t be graceful at all outside of combat, no matter how hard he tried. “We would have a base! And if some people suspected us of stuff we could just sail away.”

“Ugh…” Malos dragged a hand down his face in the overly dramatic way that Jin swore Mikhail had been starting to copy recently. “Fine. We can try and steal the damn ship. If we get caught, though, I’m leaving the kid behind to take the shit for it.” 

“No you wouldn’t,” Mikhail said with a grin, because he definitely knew better than worrying that he was going to be abandoned. And he had a point, to be honest, because the three of them had been travelling together for a long while now. Jin didn’t bother tracking the days or anything, but Mikhail was nearly an adult now, and who knew if he even grew at the same speed as a human.

“He’s right, you wouldn’t. You like him too much,” Jin said with a grin. Ganging up on Malos was always fun. 

“Shut up before I change my mind about this whole thing,” Malos grumbled, then frowned. “Ugh, I sound like a father. Someone shoot me now.”

“I’m sure I can arrange something,” Mik said. “So, how are we going to steal a big ship that everyone’s watching being dragged in?”

“We need to find out if someone’s already buying it,” Jin said. “And if there’s any Indoline presence around right now. They might snatch it up as soon as it comes in.”

“If you’re really sure you want to do this, I can go check for information on the ship.” Malos sounded decidedly grudging about that, but Jin knew him well enough by now to know that he was just as keen about this plan as they were. “I can find out if there’ll be anyone from Indol there, too.”

“Go ahead,” Jin said. “Mik, you come with me. We’re scouting up above to look for some entrance and exit routes.” Mikhail nodded, trying to look calm, but Jin could see the excitement in his eyes. How long had he been planning to pitch this one to them? 

As soon as Malos was gone, Mik’s smile widened into a grin. “Old Tornan battleships were so cool,” he said. “Nowhere has anything like it anymore.”

“I know, kid. Let me guess- you’ve been secretly planning this heist for a month without telling Malos and I.” Mikhail didn't answer that, but Jin could tell from the sheepish look on his face that he’d been right. 

“They’ve been planning on dredging it up for ages now,” he said. “Pretty much since we got here, actually, but they were struggling to get the money for the equipment. The ship isn’t going to have any guards because they don’t have the money, and from the structural analysis, the thing is mostly intact. It only sank because it was out of fuel.”

“You know all this for certain?” Jin was impressed- Mikhail had certainly done his research this time around. “If there won’t be any guards, this should be an easy steal. What else do you know about the ship?” 

“It was an intensive Cloud Sea vessel built to travel through the Rift by Leftheria,” Mikhail said. “The people researching it just couldn’t help but boast all their findings in the tavern at the end of every day. It sank maybe two and a half decades ago, carrying some kind of cargo. But they couldn’t work out what it was actually carrying, because the records sank with Torna.”

“So, it’s a ship that’s potentially full of mysterious treasure? Even better…” Jin didn't often get excited about things, but this felt like it was worthy of a bit of enjoyment. “We should probably go and help Malos now, shouldn’t we?” 

“I thought you wanted to look at our attack options from above,” Mikhail said.

“I did,” he replied. “But somehow I think you’ve already scouted that out. And it won’t be much use until we know exactly where they’ll be leaving the ship once they bring it into port.”

“True.” Mikhail didn't hesitate much longer before running off, not even waiting for Jin to follow. Jin did follow, though, a little slower than Mikhail. That boy was ridiculously enthusiastic sometimes. Running around all over the place would only attract people thinking they were suspicious.

Malos was down in the central commerce area when they reached the cloud sea port level of the titan. “Over here,” he called quietly, waving them over to a corner stacked high with boxes. “We’ve got a few things we’ll need to deal with.”

“What sort of things?” Looking around, Jin couldn’t see too many people. A couple of casual wanderers, and a few salvagers fiddling with heavy equipment. And perhaps one or two people who were hiding some serious weaponry under their clothes, but that was always normal in Alrest. The three of them were the same, after all.

“Those two over there,” Malos said, nodding towards a pair of people at a stall who looked perfectly casual. “They don’t look Indoline, but they’re speaking it. I sure as hell have no idea what they’re saying, but I’d say they’re suspicious. Mikhail, why not try heading in and striking up a conversation? Find out a cover story, at least.”

“Me?” Mikhail looked a little surprised at that. Normally, Malos would volunteer himself or Jin for this sort of thing, but Jin supposed it was a good idea to let Mikhail have a chance for once. This was his plan, after all. “...Alright.” He hesitated a moment, putting on his usual confident expression, and strode off towards the strangers. 

“Why did you do that?” Jin asked, looking over at Mikhail. This was a pretty high scale plan, and throwing Mik in at the deep end didn’t always turn out like it was meant to.

“He’s not a kid anymore,” Malos said. “If we’re stepping up our operations to stuff like this, he needs to be able to hold a conversation with a stranger.”

“Still, maybe you should have started him off small…” Jin kept one eye on Mikhail as he spoke, ready to step in if he somehow managed to provoke these strangers to attack him. To his great relief, that didn't happen, and after a minute Mikhail came bouncing back over. “So? Did you learn anything useful?” 

“They were up front about being from Indol,” he said. “I claimed I was from a school there or something and asked why they were here. Their cover, at least, is that they’re technology researchers straight from the Praetorium who’ve come to scope out the latest finds. We might have to see if they have any backup.”

“These people wandering around with weapons stuffed in their pants might be backup,” Malos pointed out. “Can’t see any blades, but I can feel some.” He was right, there was a distinct change in the ether flow leading away from the port. Jin glanced back at the buildings in the surrounding streets. Any one of them could be harbouring a few blades ready to spring into action. 

“We should go up top,” Jin suggested. “No sense in attracting attention down here for now. Do you know exactly when the ship is being brought in, Mikhail?”

“Could be any time tonight,” he said with a shrug. “They only detected it because of shifting tides, and it’s pretty far away by now. They’re just about to leave to pick it up, but if the job is more difficult than they expect it could come in late.”

“So, our job is to wait?” Jin shrugged, and leaned back against the wall. “Sounds good to me.” Normally jobs were a lot more complicated than this. Or then again, maybe this one would get complicated later. This was still early days. 

“We just have to make sure that no one realises we’re waiting,” Malos said, sparing a glance at the people from Indol. “Any suggestions for what we can do on the Flight Deck that doesn’t look like we’re waiting for something?”

“Look like tourists,” Mikhail suggested. “Just be really obnoxious and loud and keep saying how excited you are to watch real salvagers.” He grinned. “They’ll hate us so much that we could get away with anything, they’ll have tuned us out completely in half an hour.” 

“Up on the Flight Deck, though?” Malos asked. “The salvagers are already gone. Talking about it non stop only alerts people that we’re interested. I know you’re all about the dramatics, Mik, but I think subtlety is key here.”

“Like you’re so great at subtlety,” Mik retorted. That earned him a swat on the arm from Malos, but honestly, Jin had to agree with the kid. Neither of his teammates were particularly subtle people. 

“I would suggest that we simply sit down and wait,” he interjected before the argument could escalate any further. “They can’t exactly stop us. If anyone asks what we’re doing, we’re simply watching the Cloud Sea.” 

“Go grab one of your nerd books,” Malos said, nudging Mikhail. “We’ll wait for you upstairs.” Mikhail frowned momentarily, but probably decided it wasn’t worth arguing with Malos over this and started heading up towards the inn. “Father, I swear he gets more exhausting every day.”

“Really? I think he’s gotten more tolerable lately,” Jin mused. “He’s certainly grown up a bit. Give him a year or two, he’ll be almost as tall as we are.” Now that was a strange thought. In Jin’s mind, Mikhail was still that excited, stubborn little kid.

“Give him twenty and he’ll look older than us,” Malos said with a laugh. That was an even stranger thought that Jin wasn’t sure if he was ready to deal with. The assumption that they’d all be living for another few decades was enough to be going on with.

“Who knows what he’ll look like in twenty years?” Jin sighed. “That core crystal in his chest could do just about anything to him, poor kid.” Before anything more could be said on the matter, Mikhail came running back towards them, almost tripping over a rock before finally reaching them.

“I grabbed one of my ‘nerd books’,” he said, waving it dismissively in Malos’ direction. “If that’s my cover sorted, what are you and Jin going to do? Two men standing and brooding doesn’t exactly look covert.”

“We can just sit and watch the clouds, because we’re grown men who don’t need books to keep us occupied.” Jin turned away, heading for a quiet corner of the docks and settling down with his back against the wall. It might be a long wait; he wanted to be as comfortable as possible. 

-

The afternoon turned to dusk, and the sun set. Under the light of the moon, finally, there was a shifting in the clouds in the distance. “That has to be it!” Mikhail had long abandoned the book in favour of intently staring into the distance, and now he was practically shaking with excitement.

Jin squinted into the distance, and he had to agree, that looked like the front end of a ship slowly coming towards them. Even he couldn’t help a thrill of excitement, and looking over at Malos, he saw that distinctive spark in his eye, too. They were all ready for a fight, and ready to claim their prize at the end of it. 

It approached exactly the dock they imagined it would, towed by a salvaging vessel that looked in worse shape than the actual relic. That only played into their hands. All they had to do was keep the ship in their possession for long enough for Mikhail to get the fuel in it. Simple as anything.

“So,” Jin said quietly, glancing first at Mikhail and then at Malos. “What’s the plan? Attack them as soon as they get in range of us? It seems to me like Mik should prioritise getting on the ship, and the rest of us should keep everyone else out of the way.” 

“I say we go all in,” Mikhail said immediately. “The most they have on the ship are some weedy salvagers. What’s important is keeping Indol off of it. So once we’re on, just keep an eye on the entry points while I get this beauty running.”

“I didn’t realise the ship was a pretty girl now,” Malos said with a chuckle.

“He’s not,” Mikhail said with a wink, turning his eyes once more to the incoming ship. Jin had to admit it was good to see something so familiar once more.

“Right, so we leave Mikhail to flirt with the ship or whatever, and we beat up the salvagers.” Malos snorted. “Sounds like as good a plan as any.” He stood up, cracking his knuckles in a very unnecessarily dramatic way. “Let’s get going.”


	2. Home

“Maybe you’re a little smarter than you look, kid.” Even Malos had to show some grudging respect for what Mikhail had just done. In less than an hour, he’d managed to get the ship’s ancient engines running, and now they were well away, far out of range of any Indoline mercenaries or soldiers or anyone who might come after them. 

“Nerd books have to be used for something,” he said with a grin. Long gone was the child Malos had dragged to studying when the little boy insisted he would never need it. It made him feel...something. “We’ll need to find a power source it can run on more indefinitely. I have some ideas, but it’ll take a while.”

“I think we deserve to take the rest of the day off to celebrate,” Jin said. “Without Mikhail, we wouldn’t have this lovely new ship.” Malos had never seen Jin look quite so happy. It made a nice change. 

“Speak for yourself, I’m going exploring,” Mikhail said, his eyes alight. Of course he was. The lights weren’t on, for the sake of conserving their power, but it wasn’t like that was a barrier. “This ship is so cool! There could be a bunch of stuff on here.”

“Including monsters,” Malos reminded him.

“I can fight monsters,” Mikhail said, summoning two glowing blue fans just to prove his point. Without another word, he was off, his footsteps echoing in the empty corridors of the ship.

Malos sighed, and turned to Jin. “If he gets lost, I vote that you’re the one who has to go find him.”

“I believe you’re the one who can see in the dark,” Jin commented, moving to lean against the wall. “It’s good to be here. Even if everything else is long gone, this feels- different, somehow.”

“I get what you mean.” Malos rested a hand against the flat wall of the ship. It was cool, and it hummed slightly from the engine. A comforting feeling, for sure. “Don’t suppose you know what this ship’s called? Seems like the sort of useless information you might keep in your head…” 

“If Mik didn’t know, I have no chance,” he said. A shame. “But there may be something left on the ship that tells us the answer to that. Records, or an old processing system, or even some cargo.”

“Worth a look.” Malos eyed Jin for a moment longer. He really did seem at peace here, strangely enough. A smile suited him a lot better than his omnipresent mild frown. “Where do we go to find records, hmm?”

“I wouldn’t have a clue,” he said. “But maybe we should go exploring. We’re not going to find anywhere to sleep if we don’t, anyway. I wouldn’t be able to see in the dark like you, though.” And then, without the reservedness that Malos was used to from Jin, he took his hand. “Lead the way, and we’ll see what we can find.”

Malos just looked down at their joined hands for a moment, and decided not to comment on it. Holding onto Jin’s hand and just not saying anything about it seemed like the safest course of action here. He led them off in the opposite direction to Mikhail, glancing around in the steadily darkening corridors for any sign of bedrooms or a records room. “This place could do with a handful of windows,” Jin said.

“It’s not too bad,” he returned, shooting Jin a smile, though he didn’t know if the other man could see it. They made their way down several hallways and a few sets of stairs before reaching a room ankle deep in water. “Is there a breach in the hull somewhere?”

“Quite possibly. We can send Mik to take a look at it whenever he gets done exploring…” Jin lifted a hand, and the water in the room froze solid almost instantaneously. Malos nodded approvingly, and carefully stepped onto the ice to explore further.

The room was lined with cabinet after cabinet, all of them containing paperwork of some kind. “Wow,” Malos said. “We need to get Mik to find out how long this thing was in service. This is a lot of stuff.”

“It’s a shame most of it is degraded now,” Jin said. The lack of air under the Cloud Sea was good at preserving things, but the damp in the room had caused most of the papers to be unreadable.

Malos let go of Jin’s hand somewhat reluctantly, and picked his way over the ice to open one of the cabinets. Rust made the door sticky, but it fell open with a hard enough tug. He picked a sheaf of papers out, flipping through them. They seemed to be reports of some kind, detailing activity on the ship. “Jin, get over here. There might be a name on one of these documents somewhere.” 

Jin chuckled. “I can’t see the pages,” he said. “We’d be better off taking them back to the main room with the light.” Malos nodded, before realising that Jin couldn’t see his nod, and tucked the papers under one arm before moving carefully back over to Jin.

Jin reached out for his hand again, and Malos still didn't say anything about it. It was easiest to pretend that they were just doing it so that Jin didn't fall over in the dark. Malos led him back out of the room, and through the dark corridors until light finally started to permeate the pitch darkness once more. 

When they reached the room they’d started in, Mik was still gone, which wasn’t really a surprise. His penchant for getting lost hadn’t faded with time in any way. Malos set the papers on a now disconnected control panel and spread them out. “Let’s get to work, then.”

Jin nodded, and they both bent over the control panel to read through the papers. It wasn’t a very easy job; the damp of this ship had faded the ink to the point where it was almost illegible in most places. But they were both determined, so they kept on reading. Most of it was, honestly, dull old crap. Records, decades old, of cargo long delivered, long used, long lost. It was of absolutely no use to them, but Jin was clearly finding it interesting, so Malos didn’t say anything.

It was Jin who eventually found a name. The top of most of the pages had been stained by water, but he stumbled across one that wasn’t damaged, excitedly pointing at the words printed onto the paper. “Look! ‘The Monoceros’. That sounds like a name to me.” 

“Sounds pretty funny to me,” Malos said. It had a strange sound to it that vaguely registered as something in his mind, but he was unsure as to what it meant. Now that was an irritatingly familiar sensation, but one he hadn’t felt for a fair while now. He used to get it every time he even glanced at the World Tree. “But it fits.”

“Seems suitably grand for a ship like this.” Jin looked around, that soft smile from before still on his lips. Malos had to force himself not to stare. “The Monoceros… Bet she never thought she’d be home to people like us.” 

“Didn’t Mikhail say the ship was a man?” He asked. They’d been joking around at the time, of course, but he didn’t have an intricate understanding of how people referred to battleships.

“Humans,” Jin said, tutting. “The ship doesn’t have a gender at all. It’s just been unnecessarily given one.”

“Whatever you say.” Malos pushed aside some of the papers littering the defunct control panel, giving himself some space to rest his arm. “Speaking of Mik, I wonder where he’s run off to…” 

“It’s probably worth checking that he hasn’t been eaten by monsters,” Jin said. Light hearted jokes, too; Jin really was in a good mood.

“He probably hit his head on a low ceiling and knocked himself out,” Malos said with a laugh. “Let’s go see if we can find him, then.” He pushed back his chair, peering down the corridor Mikhail had taken. It was long, the end of it disappearing into shadows. The hum of the engine seemed to be coming from that way too- of course, Mik would run off in the direction of the nearest big machine. 

They walked through the darkness again, and Malos missed the feeling of Jin’s hand in his own, but he didn’t want to push his luck and initiate anything. Jin just stayed close, probably following the sound of his footsteps. Malos couldn’t imagine how unnerving it was for him, honestly. He’d never been in the dark before.

The sound of the engine grew louder and louder, until without much warning they turned a corner and were met with the light of fire in working machinery, and, sitting with his face illuminated by the orange glow, Mikhail. Malos cleared his throat, and the boy jumped like he’d just seen a ghost. “Having fun down here?”

“I found the actual engine,” he said with a grin. “The fuel I put in earlier is powering this huge thing. I’m just trying to get a look at all the moving parts but obviously I can’t stop it to take a look inside the engine or we’d just sink, look, it’s so amazing!”

“Very big, and, eh...firey.” Malos wasn’t quite sure how you were supposed to compliment an engine. “So, if you want to look inside, we need to find someplace to dock the ship? And have you thought of a reliable fuel supply? I know we’re fine, but Jin needs some lights in this place.” 

“I’m not made of ideas,” Mikhail said. “But docking would be best. Somewhere without documentation of docking, but also not too quiet because if it’s super quiet then news will get round really quickly. In terms of fuel? I’d need to know what it ran on before.”

“Don’t you already know that? I thought you put fuel in here already.” 

“I did, but that was just a guess, and I’m not sure it was entirely right. The engine sounds a bit off, can’t you tell?” Honestly, Malos could not tell. This was not his area of expertise. 

“We found some documents on the ship,” Jin said. “If you head back over to the central area then we can start looking through them. It’s called the Monoceros, by the way.”

“That’s such a good name!” Mikhail said, and Malos knew that even though Jin couldn’t see what Mik was doing, he could tell that he was practically jumping up and down from excitement. 

“It’s a good ship,” Jin said, getting that fond smile on his face again. Malos admired it for a moment, then quickly turned back to Mikhail. Now was no time for getting distracted.

“So, we need to find a nice quiet place to dock, and let Mikhail crawl around in the engine until he figures out how it works. Sounds like a plan.” 

“We need to find some habitable bedrooms as well,” Mikhail said. “I found one earlier but when I opened the door it smelt awful so there was probably a body in there. I don’t know how many people were on this ship when it went down.”

“Well, when we dock we can clean out the bodies as well.” Another task that probably wasn’t going to be very pleasant, but never mind. Malos had done worse things in his time. “Tonight, though, we should celebrate somehow. Not every day we get our hands on a ship, after all.”

“We don’t have anything to celebrate with,” Jin pointed out.

Malos shrugged. “This is me saying that we’ve made a real step forward here today,” he said. And without thinking about it, he made the decision to step forward and put an arm around Jin’s shoulders. Jin jumped, but leaned into it after a few moments. Seconds later, Mikhail joined in.

Yep. This was why he could afford to stick around on Alrest for a bit longer. There were people worth fighting for here.


End file.
